


dead & buried

by specklesandflowers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 11:09:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18991471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/specklesandflowers/pseuds/specklesandflowers
Summary: I refuse to believe the last five minutes of endgame ever happened





	dead & buried

It takes a second for Steve’s brain to process the voice that comes through his ear. “On your left,” says Sam, and a sort of rapture begins as the sky opens, sparking golden light. The Steve of 1943 would’ve likely believed that he had, in fact, been killed at the hands of Thanos and that these angels, these wonderful beings who vanished into dust five years ago, were coming to finally, finally welcome him home.

The problem is that it’s 2023 now, and Steve knows a talking space raccoon, a literal Norse god, and woman who embodies the power of the tesseract. He spares himself a moment to ache for the people he has mourned for five years, a moment of joy and relief at their apparent return, and then does what he’s been made to do – picks up the cracked remnants of his shield and pushes his aching body forward to finish yet another fight for their lives.

Afterward, he remembers only flashes. Wanda nearly tearing Thanos apart in the midst of her blinding fury. T’challa and Peter playing catch with the new gauntlet. Danvers as a barely-there-and-gone-again streak of glowing power. Thanos wearing the gauntlet. Thanos snapping his fingers. The confusion that creeps over his smug expression as nothing happens.

 

 _Tony_ snapping his fingers.

 

The quiet of a battle won is made more eerie by the fact that the enemy is simply… gone. They’ve been dusted, every last one of them, and nothing remains. There’s something to be said about the lack of clean-up to be done, but it’s awfully unnerving to not have the remnants of an army scattered about.

He realizes too late, spends too long gazing out at the empty battlefield, and he reaches the scene just in time to see the arc reactor in Tony’s chest sputter out. Mrs. Potts cries quietly, face buried in Tony’s neck and hand clenched too tight into neck of the Ironman suit. Any sound at all is far too loud in the stillness.

Queens is there, as is Rhodey. The kid is crying too, face contorted as he tries to keep himself together for Mrs. Potts sake. Rhodey holds him with one arm – Peter, Steve remembers his name on the ‘missing’ list from all those years ago, the “I lost the kid”and the haunted way in which Tony had regarded his missing persons photo – and squeezes Mrs. Potts’ free hand with the other. Steve falls to his knees, Thor beside him, unable to take his eyes off of Tony, and barely registers the slow but sure gathering of their forces, their friends, as everyone comes to stand around them.

It’s Bucky’s arm – the flesh arm, not the metal – sliding over his shoulder, that snaps him out of it.

On his knees still, he turns his face into the metal of Bucky’s armor. It’s not comfortable, none of it is – he’s sure he’s broken in about ten million different places, and others are hurt worse, god, _Pepper_ is hurt _so much worse_ – but Bucky’s hand is carding through his hair and his left arm has pulled Steve towards him and is holding him firmly in place.

Maybe it’s the 1940’s in him that prevents him from experiencing a full-on breakdown right there on the battlefield. Maybe it’s just that he’s too damn exhausted, in every sense of the word, to even _be_ emotional. Even as he searches for it, tries to feel something, anything, he finds nothing but aching numbness. He lets himself lean into Bucky, feel the pain throbbing from every single part of his body, and tries his best not to think about anything.

 

The little group that had gathered around Tony drifts apart eventually, most to tend their own wounds or reunite with their loved ones, finally returned after five cold, dark, miserable years. It takes longer for some to finally turn away – Steve, Barton, Thor, and Banner, still reeling from the dynamic of a battle fought and won without Natasha by their side, can’t quite seem to walk away without Tony, too.

No one tries to pull them away.

 

Thor is led away by Valkyrie, eventually, as she tuts at him about the gash sliced into the front of his armor by Thanos that has been slowly but steadily welling with blood. She tugs Banner along with her because he, too, seems incapable of moving on his own. Barton, after a lingering squeeze to Steve’s shoulder, leaves to call Laura.

It’s Bucky – because it’s always, alwaysBucky – who finally gets him on his feet again.

“C’mon, Stevie. Up you get.”

He doesn’t even try to put up a fight, just goes where Bucky directs him.

Someone, at some point, had taken Peter away, or he would’ve had Bucky take care of the kid first. Rhodey is holding onto Pepper now, both of them silent in grief, and it’s only the startling feeling of the numbness giving way to something much, much darker that allows Bucky to maneuver Steve away from them.

They can’t get back into the compound, he realizes. There isn’t even a compound for them to retreat to. The thought allows him to compartmentalize, to shove the part of his brain that realizes the enormity of what he’s lost back into the little box where it is usually locked away. No one has escaped this battle unscathed, and some of them have family to call, and Steve is needed in a way that he hasn’t been, not in a very long time.

Reunions are happening wherever he looks. Most of them are tired. Quiet. Sighs of relief tinged with exhaustion and coupled with the stifled wince of an injury moved too quickly. There’s also a round of introductions to be had – none of The Vanished know Carol – but she and Wanda are fretting over Peter as he slumps against a melted hunk of metal.

“Two self-sacrificing blondes with a hotheaded streak?” Bucky mutters, quiet enough for only Steve to hear, “Just what I need.”

He snorts a little and shakes his head, “Nah, she can clean up after herself. Better than I ever could.”

Bucky raises a skeptical eyebrow but says nothing.

 

Steve gets everyone squared away, makes sure their injuries are tended to as best as possible, opens as many lines of communication as possible with – well, with everyone notin their little superhero bubble, and only once he starts swaying on his feet does Bucky, who hasn’t once stepped out of Steve’s shadow, tug him away.

He finds a place beneath what was probably part of the garage door, propped up against another sheet of metal in such a way that a small, dusty alcove sits untouched beneath them. Bucky barely has to push him forward; he all but collapses onto the floor, hand reaching behind him as he goes to tug Bucky down with him.

Bucky follows willingly, just like he’s always done since Steve was barely 90 pounds and brimming with righteousness and angry at the world. They sit next to each other, shoulders pressed together, and when he finally starts to shake Bucky reaches out and pulls him in.

It took a bit of adjusting, after he found Bucky strapped to that table in Germany. They had to change the way they fit together to accommodate Steve’s… everything. Before he was big, before he was hardened by war and loss and life, Bucky used to be able to tuck Steve’s forehead right into the crook of his neck and manhandle the rest of his bony limbs to mold themselves to the line of Bucky’s body. He’s too big for all that, now, but his forehead still fits into Bucky’s neck just the same way.

Bucky holds him there while he cries, fingers combing through his hair softly in the same way they had earlier. Steve doesn’t miss that it’s his flesh hand doing all the affectionate action – even in Wakanda, with Shuri’s new vibranium tech replacing torn-out Soviet metal, he’d been unwilling to accept that the metal part of him could do anything good again.

It’s an ongoing argument.

Once the tears subside, he’s left slumped against Bucky feeling nothing but that aching numbness again. It’s almost laughable that just that morning he’d been giving an inspirational speech to a ragtag team of superheroes, collected from all over the galaxy. He’d been back to New York, back to Jersey, since then.

Talked to Rumlowe. Sitwell. Pierce.

Seen Howard.

Seen _Peggy_.

“See you in a second.” Natasha had said. She’d been smiling.

Time travel could be a real bitch, sometimes.

Bucky shifts next to him, and Steve amends that thought. Extra stress on sometimes.

“The magician – ” Bucky clears his throat, “the magician said. Five years?”

Steve closes his eyes. Opens them. “Yeah.”

Bucky exhales, calm and measured in a way that suggests he’s anything but. “Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

They sit there next to each other in silence, the soft click-whir of Bucky’s arm the only sound Steve is able to focus on. It’s been five years – or, depending on how you look at it, it’s been much longer than that.

It’s awfully unfair, how the universe has treated them, though it keeps shoving them back together somehow. Time feels a little bit like a bully, and, well. At this point, the whole galaxy knows how Steve feels about bullies.

Tucked into their little alcove, nobody comes to bother them. It’s a miracle, almost, because Steve knows in the back of his mind just how much cleanup and recovery needs to be done. Knows how much fallout they have to deal with. But he can’t bring himself to do it. Not yet.

 _I lost. Again._ Tony had said to him after his return from space. _We lost._ Steve had replied.

They’d won this battle. They’d won this war, this five-year, or ten-year, or eighty-year long fight that they’d been caught up in since that goddamned space cube decided to start a world war. So why does it feel like they haven’t won anything at all?

 

Bucky allows him half an hour to sit in silence. At some point the sun begins to set, and the dust in the air turns the sky a vibrant shade of pink. He’s alive – hurt, but alive – and Bucky is still pressed into his side, warm and also probably hurt but _alive_ , and Steve wishes he could enjoy it.

“I owe you a welcome back party later. This one is lacking.” Steve says, head resting on Bucky’s shoulder.

Without looking at him, Bucky gropes around for Steve’s hand and gives it a squeeze. “Company’s not so bad. Plus, it’s been a lot longer for you than it has for me.”

“Mm.”

After the sun has set and the colors have begun to leech out of the clouds, Bucky jostles him with his shoulder. “You planning on sleeping here, or…?”

Steve sighs and sits up, wincing and rubbing at the stiffness in his neck. “We should go and see what we can do to help.”

Bucky’s hand replaces his own, kneading out the tension that has settled at the base of his neck. “Okay.”

Neither of them make any move to get up.

Eventually, Bucky says, “So – we gonna go?”

“Jerk. Knock it off, then.” He bats Bucky’s arm away from where it’s working circles into the tense muscles of his shoulders and immediately misses the contact. “Get up.”

They stagger to their feet, Steve feeling all of the aches and pains of his body hit him at once. He feels like… well, he feels like he’s been tossed around by a space titan.

Bucky takes one look at his face and all but frog-marches him over to Banner. It’s really not so bad, since his body has already begun working on repairing itself, but Banner sighs at him judgmentally and dumps pain medicine into his palm anyway.

Bucky glares at him until he takes it.

 

Their air support had been making rounds over the last couple of hours, picking up blankets and tents and supplies for those who shouldn’t be moved very far. Bucky takes a tent to pitch and Steve makes the rounds, checking on everyone remaining on the field.

Pepper is gone – home to Morgan, Steve presumes. Someone must have taken Peter back to Queens, because Steve can’t see him anywhere. Sam is talking quietly to Rhodey, but when he sees Steve approaching he ends the conversation and meets him halfway.

Sam reaches out for him and squeezes, just this side of too tight, “Steve.”

“Good to see you, man.”

Sam takes a step back and claps Steve on the shoulder. “You too, man, you too.” He cuts a quick glance over Steve’s shoulder. “You.”

Bucky, who has apparently rejoined him, rolls his eyes. “Wilson.”

“You holding up okay? Banner check you out yet?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Steve says, “don’t worry about me.”

Sam leans around him to look at Bucky, who says, “I watched him take the meds.”

“I can take care of myself!” Steve protests, albeit halfheartedly.

Bucky scoffs. “Sure you can, pal.”

Sam smiles tiredly at Steve. “Go on, get some sleep. We’ll figure this mess out in the morning.”

He turns away, but Steve reaches out and pulls him into one last hug, fingers gripping tight into the fabric of Sam’s jacket. “Good to have you back, man.”

Sam pats his back, hugging back just as tightly. “Good to be back.”

 

Steve all but collapses onto the ground of their tent. Bucky, on the other hand, takes his time methodically removing his armor and tossing it into a pile in the corner. He sits next to Steve’s head where he lays out on the floor and nudges him with his elbow.

“You won’t be comfortable sleeping in that.”

“Nngh.”

“Steve.”

He sits up and tosses the remnants of his shield into the corner pile, then settles right back down again. Bucky frowns at him, then at the shield.

“Thought you threw that thing out in Siberia.”

Steve rolls over to look at him. “Yeah. Tony – when Tony came back to work with us, he figured he’d bring it along. Said something about Morgan using it as a sled, otherwise.”

“Morgan?”

Ah. “His daughter.”

“His _daughter_.” Bucky says. “Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah.”

They’re both filthy, covered in dirt and ash and Steve doesn’t even want to think about what else, but he shuffles over to rest his head on Bucky’s leg anyway.

Bucky breaks the quiet with, “So. Five years, huh?”

Steve squeezes his eyes shut and presses his face harder into the muscle of Bucky’s thigh. “Five years.” He confirms, voice hard.

“I’d ask if you did anything stupid, but.” Bucky smiles, tired. “I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.”

“Does time travel count as stupid?”

Bucky huffs, like he thinks Steve is joking, and when no other response is forthcoming, he cuts off abruptly. “You did not time travel.” Still, Steve says nothing, and Bucky all but shoves him off of his leg and forces him to sit upright. “Steve.”

“We had to get the stones before Thanos did.”

“Why didn’t you just _take_ the stones from him?” Bucky asks, incredulous, then he shakes his head. “How is it that I’d prefer you going to _space_ than you traveling through time. How is this a comparison that I can make.”

“Oh,” says Steve, “we did go to space. That was the first thing we did. Turns out Thanos had destroyed the stones – there was no way to get them back and undo everything.” He pauses, and then, because he has a feeling Bucky will appreciate it, tacks on, “Thor cut off his head.”

Bucky frowns. “What, is he like. A lizard, or something? His head looked pretty intact to me.”

“I dunno.” Steve says, rubbing at his eyes. “Time travel, remember?”

“Right,” Bucky scrubs a hand across his face, “time travel. Of course.”

Steve blinks, and his eyes burn with exhaustion. He casts a quick glance around the tent, noting the lack of any sort of bedroll, and turns to Bucky with a questioning eyebrow raised.

Bucky shrugs. “There weren’t too many cots, and I figured we’ve slept on worse.”

Curling up on his side, Steve smiles tiredly, “You’re not wrong.”

“I never am.” Bucky says. “Go to sleep, Steve.”

For once in his life, he doesn’t try to argue, just closes his eyes and finally allows himself to sleep.

 

The next morning, Bucky is gone when Steve wakes. He steps out of the tent to see the grounds crawling with government officials – there are so many that Steve doesn’t even bother to identify which branch of the government they belong to.

He spends the day lifting heavy things, helping coordinate transportation, and generally ignoring his own wellbeing. By the time most of their crew has parted ways, his arms feel like lead weights and something around his general rib area is throbbing so painfully that he decides to just… stand in one place for a while.

Bucky, who sees right through him, drags him over to where Strange has all but finished portal-ing people home and demands they be sent to a hospital.

“Can we just.” Steve grits out, one arm slung over Bucky’s shoulders and one clutching at his side. “Can we skip the hospital visit, please? You can fuss over me all you want, but right now all I wanna do is sleep in my bed.”

“Brooklyn, then.” Bucky says, staring at Strange until he sighs and waves his hands in the air.

 

They step through the portal into Flatbush, and Bucky promptly drags Steve down the street, up his front steps, nudges aside the rock hiding the spare key, and shoves him through his own doorway and onto his couch.

“How did you – ” Steve starts to ask, then stops himself.

“I asked Banner yesterday. What you’d been up to since we… well. He told me you came out here.”

“What, and he just gave you the address?”

“No,” Bucky looks sideways at him, “I asked. What’s the issue here?”

Steve laughs a little. “No issue, Buck, stand down.”

“Sure _seemed_ like an issue,” he grumps, the gentle way he sits down besides Steve a stark contrast to the grouchy tone of his voice. “Shove over.”

He arranges himself around Steve, not an easy task on a couch that was barely big enough for one supersoldier, let alone two. It’s not exactly comfortable, but he just spent five years without Bucky and he’ll be damned if he’s going to put extra space between them now.

Despite the fact that Bucky is lying half on top of him and his elbow is wedged uncomfortably into Bucky’s sternum, Steve falls asleep in about three seconds.

He wakes to Bucky moving around in his kitchen and his phone buzzing on the table. A quick glance at the screen shows a number of missed messages from Banner. He wants to return the stones as soon as possible, apparently.

Steve spares a sigh for the lazy morning he might’ve had and hauls himself to his feet with the barest hint of a grimace at the various aches of his body.

Bucky doesn’t even turn around to look at him when he reaches the kitchen, just continues poking at the eggs and says, “We gotta go back, don’t we.”

It’s not a question, so Steve doesn’t treat it like one. “Banner wants to put the stones back.”

“So we _don’t_ have to go back.”

Steve levels his best Judgmental Look at Bucky’s back. “Buck.”

“We don’t!” he throws his hands in the air, spatula clattering to the stovetop. “We don’t. Why? _Why_ do you always have to be the self-sacrificing _asshole_ that does everything for the greater good? Why can’t someone else be the asshole for once?”

He seems to realize what he’s said as soon as he says it, and his mouth snaps shut. His face drains of color, and regret passes across his features before he swears softly and closes his eyes.

Steve sits at the countertop in silence for a few minutes. “Sorry,” Bucky starts, “I didn’t – ”

“When we went back in time to get the stones,” Steve says haltingly, “Tony and I went back twice. We went to New York, back in 2012, but we messed up, that time. We lost the tesseract.”

He sees Bucky think ‘ _I’m sorry, you_ lost _the glowing blue space cube_?’ but moves past it quickly. “We went back to 1970. To Lehigh, to get the tesseract from Howard.”

Bucky makes a face. “You went to _Jersey_?”

“It was a tough time for all of us, Bucky, now shut up and let me talk.”

“Punk.”

“We got the tesseract, but.” He can’t quite figure out how to say it, so he restarts, “Tony got to talk to Howard, I… well. I stole some government property, but I also – I saw Peggy.”

Bucky’s face does something complicated, but he gestures at Steve to ‘go on’, which he does. “She looked… she looked barely older than she did when I went down in the ice. She was a director, I think. Had her own office.”

“Always knew she’d be the only one good enough to boss around those government suits.” Bucky smiles fondly. He looks at Steve – really looks – and sighs. “You wanna go back and see her.”

His chest is tight and he doesn’t know how to explain to Bucky that it’s not so much a ‘want’ as a ‘need’. He’s had a picture of Peggy tucked away in his compass for almost a decade, a painful reminder of everything he’d left behind in the 40’s. Peggy is an old wound, one that Steve had stubbornly refused to allow to heal until her death all those years ago. It had certainly sped up that process, but seeing Peggy – young, bombshell Peggy Carter – had torn that right open again.

He has Bucky now, something he thought twice he’d never get back – the end of the line just keeps evading them, apparently – and he won’t give that up. Not for anything, not ever. But.

“I owe her a dance.”

 

They get Strange to portal them back to the rubble that used to be the Avengers compound and are shown to the very edges of the battlefield, where a small camp has been constructed at the tree line.

Banner greets them, explaining that he needs a few more hours to finish setting up the new Quantum Tunnel before Steve can set off. Bucky wanders off to find a tent, grumbling about how they could’ve just stayed home, and Steve tries to help Banner with as much as possible before he becomes too much of a hindrance and Banner sends him away.

He’s sitting next to the lake when he feels more than sees Bucky emerge from the trees behind him. Steve isn’t surprised when Bucky sits down next to him, but he _is_ surprised to see that he’s holding the remnants of the shield. He thought he’d left that behind in their battlefield tent.

“This thing has seen better days, huh.” Bucky contemplates, spinning the shield around and around in his hands.

Steve hums in response but says nothing.

“You wanna tell me why you have it in the first place?” Bucky asks. “I know Stark brought it back to you, but why’d you take it? You could’ve stuck it in your garage. Or… used it as wall art, I dunno.”

Tearing his eyes away from the lake in front of him, Steve tilts his head to regard the broken, misshapen piece of metal. “When Tony offered it to me, I think it was an olive branch of sorts. And then we were going into this fight, and it seemed so… final, that I just. I felt like the team needed Captain America, not Steve, and, well.” He waves a hand at the shield. “It just seemed right at the time.”

“You gonna pick it back up again?”

It seems like a casual question, but Steve knows what Bucky’s asking him. Those years between Siberia and Thanos’ first attack, when Steve had been free to go wherever he pleased without duty calling him back to the States, when he’d hid out in Wakanda more often than not, helping Bucky tend to his goats… all of that, if Steve picks up this shield again, would be reduced to nothing more than a hazy memory.

It’s been a long road, from 1941 to 2023, and Steve is, quite frankly, exhausted.

“No. No, I don’t think I will.”

 

Bucky leaves him alone after that, with half a shield and the barest hints of a plan.

Sam arrives sometime in the afternoon, and he comes over to greet Steve almost immediately. He’s always been more observant than anyone gives him credit for, and he looks at Steve like he knows exactly how much the last five years have weighed on him.

“How’ve you been, man?”

Steve shrugs a shoulder. “Ah, you know. Tried to move on.” Sam fixes him with A Look and he smiles ruefully as he tacks on, “Couldn’t.”

Sam is about to reply when another one of Strange’s portals crackles to life not four feet away from where they stand and Thor steps out of it, Molnjir in one hand and Stormbreaker in the other.

“Captain,” he nods, “Sam.”

“Thor,” says Sam, “How’ve you been?”

Thor strides over and claps Steve on the back as he does so, transferring both weapons to one arm. “Well enough. We’ve been busy getting New Asguard back on its feet.”

“I didn’t realize New Asguard had ever fallen over.” Steve says.

Thor’s eyes twinkle at him, the small quirk of his smile hidden under the ridiculousness of his overgrown beard, “I have some ideas for a change in management,” he says, “and I think they’ll go over well.”

“Change in management, huh?” Sam says, eyebrows raised, “From what I understand, you’re the management.”

Thor just grins and shrugs. The braids in his beard are still intact, though starting to unravel just the tiniest bit. He holds up Molnjir in Steve’s direction.

“I heard you were taking the stones back, figured this should probably go with them.”

Sam raises an eyebrow. “How – ”

Thor tosses the hammer to Steve, far too caviler with an object that probably pre-dates everything Steve knows in the universe – which is a lot, now – and he catches it.

“Oh, holy shit.”

Sam’s eyebrows are trying to climb off of his head.

It’s funny – the hammer is a lot more aerodynamic than Steve would’ve ever thought. He’s constantly worried that he’s going to miss the handle, that his fingers are going to close too late around the leather grip and the metal would smash into his hand, but so far no dice.

Steve adjusts his grip a little. “You were fighting the same fight as us, Sam.”

“Well, yeah,” Sam says, “but I was a little preoccupied with the _aliens_ in front of me, Rogers. If I saw that hammer flying around I made a - frankly, pretty understandable - assumption that it was the _Norse god_.”

He shrugs and twirls the hammer in his grip just to mess with Sam a little bit. Thor claps him on the shoulder again and wanders away to find Banner, while Sam seems to be floundering a bit for something to say. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Molnjir in Steve’s hand.

Steve waits, and watches him, and eventually Sam just kind of nods and says, “You know, I’m not even that surprised.”

Abruptly, he’s hit with how much he’s missed Sam. It’s like a punch to the gut, leaves him breathless and reeling and something must show on his face because Sam reaches out for him, folding him into his arms despite the odd bulk of the hammer in between them.

They stay there for a few moments, just kind of clutching at each other. Sam doesn’t bother trying to move away or shift positions, just holds Steve to him as tightly has he is being held to Steve.

 

Someone calls Steve away eventually, because as long as he wears the star on his chest he’ll be needed for something. It’s something Bucky has sighed at him about for years, and something that, as much as he enjoys feeling useful, he will not miss.

He and Banner discuss logistics as he’s fitted for his new Quantum Realm Suit, because his old one was lost somewhere in the rubble of the compound. Once they’ve got final adjustments to make, he’s released for a while. He finds Bucky, who is talking in hushed tones with Sam towards the edge of their makeshift campsite. They see him coming, and Sam shoots him a smile before walking away.

Bucky reaches up to hook an arm over Steve’s shoulder, which is still a weirdly reversed position for the two of them, and leads them further from the camp’s edge. “How’re you feeling?”

If he thought he would get away with it, Steve would say ‘fine’ and move past it as fast as possible. However, it’s Bucky standing in front of him, and there’s no way in hell Bucky would ever let that slide. “Ready to finally finish this.”

“Been a long time coming, huh?”

“You could say that again.” Steve scoffs. “I never want to see the Tesseract ever again.”

Bucky laughs – as close as he’s come to a laugh in the years since Steve’s found him – and pulls his arm back to his side. “That makes two of us, punk.”

He sits down and leans back against a tree, gazing up at Steve until he sits beside him. “Ready to see Carter?”

Steve blows out a breath and settles his shoulder against Bucky’s. “Yeah.”

“You’re not gonna try and insert yourself in her life or anything, are you?”

Steve would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about it. Seeing Peggy again, almost the same version of Peggy that he’d left behind in ’45, had hurt. He’d laid her to rest years ago and sat at her funeral, had met her children and her grandchildren and had been lucky enough to have been brought back into the fold of her life for the final few years of it.

“No, no I don’t think so.” Steve says. “She’s married, she’s got her own life, who am I to try and be a part of that after she’s built everything on her own?”

“So you’re not gonna try and get with Carter?”

“I owe her a dance, Buck. That’s it. She’s too important for me, now.”

Bucky’s smile twists a bit. “No one is too important for you, Rogers.”

“Don’t _Rogers_ me, jerk.” Steve nudges him with his shoulder. “I just mean that Peg has more important things to worry about than me coming back to see her. I’m not going to try and alter her life any more than I already have. Her life is bigger than me. Always has been.”

Bucky sits with that for a moment before nodding. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something and closes it again, a look crossing his features that Steve has no idea how to interpret. It’s eerily reminiscent of those early moments after they’d fought in DC, where the Soldier bled into his mannerisms more often than not. “What?”

The look flickers into something more familiar – pain . “I heard about Natalia.”

Steve feels the constant ache in his chest thinking about everything he’s lost turn into a gaping wound. They’d all grieved together, the five of them, back when Clint had first returned from Vormir alone. Natasha had been special to each of them, in her own way, and being together without her had felt horribly wrong. He supposes they’ll have to get used to that, now.

“Yeah,” he says, at a loss. He knows, from the fragments of stories of memories he’s been able to put together, that Bucky and Nat had known each other. She’d told Steve as much. He can’t imagine what it must be like for Bucky, having come out of Hydra care having known so few people in the world, one of whom is gone again. He doesn’t know what they were to each other, and doesn’t know if he’ll ever find out, but he aches for Bucky all the same.

“’m sorry.” He offers. It’s painfully inadequate.

“Me too.”

 

They sit there for a while, just breathing the same air. Banner drops off the shield at one point – though Steve can’t tell if it’s been fixed or if it’s entirely new, courtesy of Wakanda’s vibranium stores. He and Bucky stare at it, neither quite willing to reach out and tug it any closer to them from where it’s lying on the grass.

“What are you gonna do about it?” Bucky asks warily. Steve’s pretty sure Bucky has exactly zero faith in Steve’s claim that he’ll leave it alone. For once, it’s unfounded.

Steve, who has been thinking about this decision all day, has finally made up his mind. “I’m done.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. America needs a captain, but it doesn’t need me.” He doesn’t think he’s imagining the proud quirk of Bucky’s smile at the words. “I was trying to figure out who to give it to, because it’s not a small responsibility, you know? But I think I’ve finally got it figured out.” He waits, because he’s a dramatic sonofabitch, and Bucky glowers at him.

“You crossed my mind.” He laughs at the concern that immediately covers Bucky’s face. “I’m gonna give it to Sam, I think. It needs a soldier, someone who understands war and the importance of a figurehead. And I think he’d be good at it, you know? He’s got good leadership qualities. A good heart.”

Bucky’s nodding along. “Makes sense.”

“I think so.”

“Captain Wilson, huh?” Bucky says, testing out the title. “That could work. Won’t be the same as you, though.”

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” says Steve. “The country has had me for almost ninety years. They don’t need me anymore.”

“But you think they need Sam?”

“I think they’ll always need a Captain America,” Steve muses, “but I don’t think that Captain America always has to be one person. And I think Sam is the right guy for the job.”

“Alright,” Bucky says, “I’m sold.”

“Thanks,” Steve says dryly, “I was waiting on your approval.”

Bucky smiles at him, that charmers smile that had been so common back in their day and only appears once in a blue moon now. “Knew you were.”

“Jerk.”

 

Banner calls him over a few hours later, the sun just beginning to sink in the sky. They get him outfitted and hand over the stones, and Molnjir is placed near the Quantum Tunnel.

“You have to return the stones in the exact moment you got ‘em,” Bruce says, “or you’re gonna open up a bunch of nasty alternative realities.”

“Don’t worry, Bruce,” Steve says, “I’ll clip all the branches.”

“You know, I tried,” he says, face contorted in a way that means he’s thinking about Nat. “When I had the gauntlet, the stones, I really tried to bring her back. I miss her, man.”

“Me too.” It still hurts. He doesn’t know if losing her will ever stop hurting.

He steps around the tunnel to Sam. “You know if you want, I could come with you.” Sam offers.

“You’re a good man, Sam.” He’s making the right choice. Not that he needed to confirm it, but he knows that when he offers Sam the shield, it’ll go to a good place. “This one’s on me though.”

Finally, finally, he makes his way over to Bucky, who’s standing there staring at him with an expression of forced calm. Back before the war, Bucky had been the biggest science-fiction nerd. However much of that Bucky is left now, Steve knows that it’s killing him to be this close to time travel and not be able to experience it.

“Don’t do anything stupid ‘till I get back.” Steve says.

“How can I?” Bucky replies, “You’re taking all the stupid with you.”

They hug, tight, and Steve shoves his face into Bucky’s shoulder.

“I’m gonna miss you, buddy.” _Give Carter my best._

He steps back. “It’s gonna be okay, Buck.” _I’ll be back soon._

Steve makes his way up the steps of the Quantum Tunnel, the machine whirring to life as he does so. He hefts Molnjir in one hand and the stones in the other, noting the way both Sam and Bucky’s eyes catch the movement. Bucky doesn’t even look surprised, though he’s always had a conflated sense of Steve’s “goodness”. Sam is still floored and trying not to show it. Steve feels a rush of affection run through him.

“How long is this gonna take?” Sam calls to Bruce over the whirring of the machine.

Bruce looks up. “For him? As long as he needs. For us? Five seconds. Ready, Cap?”

Steve nods.

“Alright, we’ll meet you back here, okay?”

“You bet.” He squares his shoulders, doesn’t look at Bucky. He’d give himself away otherwise.

Bruce resumes his messing with the controls. “Going Quantum, in three, two, one – ”

~~~

_“And returning in five, four, three, two, one.”_

_A pause. Nothing happens._

_Sam. “Where is he?”_

_Bruce, somewhat frantic. “I dunno, he blew right by his time stamp, he should be here.”_

_“Well, get him back.”_

_“I’m trying.”_

_“Get him the hell back!”_

_“I said I’m trying!”_

~~~

Steve, looking no worse for wear but three seconds after his supposed return time, appears on the Quantum Tunnel with surprisingly little fanfare. Bruce slumps against the control panel in relief, and Sam releases a whispered, “Thank God.”

Steve makes eye contact with Bucky and smiles a little, trotting down the steps of the machine and beelining for the bench by the lake, where his shield sits resting.

“Sam,” Bucky says, waiting for Sam to meet his eyes before jerking his head in Steve’s direction. “Go ahead.”

Sam makes his way over cautiously. “Cap?”

“Hi, Sam.”

“So, did something go wrong, or did something go right?”

Steve smiles, wistful. “Well, after I put the stones back, I realized I owed somebody a dance.”

“How’d that work out for ya?”

“I was about twenty-five years late,” Steve says, “but she didn’t seem to mind too much.”

“I’m happy for you.” Sam says. It’s nothing less than completely genuine.

“Thank you,” Steve says, smile bright enough to rival the sun. He sits up straighter, like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He supposes one has.

Sam’s eyes flick to the shield, sitting forgotten on the ground in front of Steve. “You gonna be picking that thing up again?”

Steve eyes it for a while. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

Sam doesn’t seem surprised to hear that. He was around when Steve broke them out of The Raft. Saw what he became when he was free of the stars and stripes for a time, however short.

“I gotta say, though, I’m a little bummed out that I have to live in a world without Captain America.” Steve can tell it’s meant to be said jokingly, but it’s the perfect segue.

“Well,” Steve says, “that reminds me.” He lifts the shield and presents it to Sam, who stares at him like he’s lost his mind. “Try it on.”

It takes a couple of moments, where Sam searches his expression for any signs of jest. Not finding any, he reaches out, incredulity etched across his features. He holds it in his right hand, feeling the weight.

Steve smiles at him. He looks right, holding it. “How does it feel?”

“Like it’s someone else’s.” Sam says.

“It isn’t.”

A pause. “Thank you,” Sam says, “I’ll do my best.”

Steve smiles at that. “That’s why it’s yours.”

Sam keeps looking at the shield on his arm, like he can’t believe it’s sitting there.

“What will you do?”

Steve barely even has to think about it, resists looking over his shoulder to where he knows Bucky is waiting for him.

“I thought I might try some of that life Tony was telling me to get.”

**Author's Note:**

> me, after watching endgame for the first time: I need to read a fix-it right now immediately 
> 
> me, after watching endgame for the second time: where tf is that fix-it oh right I have to write it first 
> 
> sorry this took so long but I wanted to go watch it again to get the dialogue right


End file.
